Hot tubs went into a great many gardens a few years ago and a fair proportion of them have since stopped being used. April is when people look at the cover, work out what the running costs have been, and decide. Hot tub removal is more involved than dragging it onto a trailer, because three parts of it need dealing with separately. Our Aintree skip hire service handles the part that does go in a container.
Draining it is the first job and it needs thought
A domestic hot tub holds a great deal of water, and that water has been chemically treated. Where it goes matters.
It should not go into a surface water drain, a ditch, a watercourse or over a neighbouring boundary. Surface drains around here generally discharge to open water, and chlorinated or brominated water does real damage to whatever is living in it. That is the single most common mistake made with these.
The right approach is to stop dosing it for several days first so the sanitiser level drops, then discharge it slowly to the foul drain rather than the surface one. Slowly matters, because a large volume dumped at once can overwhelm the connection and back up somewhere you would rather it did not. If you are unsure which drain is which, a small amount of dye or simply watching where it goes will tell you.
Do not water the lawn with it while it still has sanitiser in it either.
The chemicals are not skip waste
Every hot tub has a cupboard or a box of chemicals somewhere near it, and there is usually more than the owner remembers. Chlorine or bromine granules and tablets, pH adjusters, shock treatments, algaecides and test kits.
None of it goes in a container. Pool and spa sanitisers are oxidisers, they react with other substances, and mixing partly used tubs together is actively dangerous rather than merely untidy. Keep them in their original containers, keep them separate from each other, and take them to a household waste site that accepts chemicals.
Our guide to hazardous waste and why it cannot go in a skip covers where this category goes. If anything is unlabelled or has been sitting damp for years, treat it with more caution rather than less.
The electrical side
Anything with a motor, a heater or a circuit board in it is electrical waste and belongs in that stream rather than in a skip. On a hot tub that means the pump or pumps, the heater, the control pack, the blower and any lighting.
Our guide to how to dispose of electrical waste responsibly explains where it goes. There is also a scrap value in the pump housings and the copper in the motors, so separating this out is worth doing rather than a chore.
The supply itself needs isolating and making safe properly. A hot tub is usually on its own circuit with an outdoor connection, and that is work for an electrician rather than for a pair of pliers.
The shell has to be cut up
Once the water, the chemicals and the electrics are gone, what remains is a large rigid box that will not go anywhere intact. A typical domestic tub is an acrylic shell backed with fibreglass and packed with foam insulation, sitting in a timber or composite cabinet on a base frame.
It has to be cut down. A reciprocating saw does it, working from the cabinet inwards, and the shell cuts more easily than it looks. What it produces is fibreglass and foam dust, which is unpleasant and irritant, so this is a proper mask, goggles, gloves and long sleeves job, done outdoors and preferably not on a windy day.
Cut it into pieces that stack flat rather than curved sections that hold the load apart. A tub cut into large curved panels fills a skip with air.
Sizing for the shell and the base
The shell itself is bulky and light, so volume is the constraint. The base is the opposite. Most hot tubs sit on a concrete pad or a substantial paved base, and if that is coming up as well you have added a serious tonnage to an otherwise light load.
Our page on skip size versus weight limits explains why those two things pull in opposite directions. For the tub alone an 8 tonne builders skip gives you the room. If the base and any surrounding decking are also going, tell us, because that changes the answer.
Keep any broken concrete separate where you can. Clean inert material crushes down and gets recovered, and our environmental and recycling page explains what happens at our end.
Is it worth selling instead
If the tub still works, it is worth an advert before the saw comes out. Working second hand tubs sell, and the buyer usually arranges the lifting and transport themselves, which saves you the whole job.
Be honest in the advert about its condition and its age. A tub sold as working that turns out not to be is a conversation nobody wants.
Access and local coverage
Hot tubs live in back gardens, so the cut up pieces have to come out through a side access or through the house. Cut them to fit the route rather than to fit the skip.
Most properties here have driveway space for a container. We cover this area regularly, running Maghull skip hire and Knowsley skip hire jobs alongside Aintree.
Ring us on 0151 909 6399 and tell us whether the base is coming out as well. Our contact page is there if you would rather send a photograph.
